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The curse of vanity. “One's identity on the internet is another layer that our generation must deal with, and there is usually a large gap between the ‘real life version’ and the ‘internet version’”, riffs model turned photographer Coco Young who is single-handedly exploring our obsession with beauty through her first publication Vanity.

Having previously worked as a model, Young calls upon her insider knowledge, exposing the subject’s fickle ideologies while capturing the modern day importance of an image and echoing our obsession with social exhibitionism.
VATICAN For Pope, Catholics should avoid the "sins of the media: disinformation, slander and defamation"
» 12/15/2014VATICANFor Pope, Catholics should avoid the "sins of the media: disinformation, slander and defamation"The "tasks" of those involved in social communication include speaking freely, without submissions to politics or economics; choosing the "path of understanding" the whole of reality; and avoiding attention-grabbing the user.

"Genuine communication is not concerned with attention-grabbing. Alternating catastrophic alarmism and consolatory detachment - two extremes that we see continually in today's communication - are not a good service media offer to people.
" Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Pope Francis met today with the managers and workers of TV2000, an Italian Church television broadcasting company. During the audience, he spoke to them about the tasks people working in the social communications field, in particular Catholic communicators, have to perform.

"Oftentimes, [social] communication is subject to propaganda, ideologies, politics, economics or technology.
Anti-American Disinformation About Ebola Spreads. Stories that the Pentagon manufactured Ebola in a laboratory have been surfacing in a number of U.S. and foreign media outlets, helping to create even more of a panic over the spreading disease.

A new variation of an old Soviet charge, it is designed to besmirch the reputation of the United States in black Africa. In the hands of Russian disinformation specialists, it could spark protests against the stationing of U.S troops in Africa to restrict the Ebola outbreak. Advertisement-content continues below. Inside the Chinese boot camp treating Internet addiction. ‘Internet addiction leads to problems in the brain similar to those derived from heroin consumption,’ Tao says in his office at the centre’s headquarters, a new building added in 2013 to increase patient capacity to 130.

‘But, generally, it is even more damaging. It destroys relationships and deteriorates the body without the person knowing.
Stephen Hawking: artificial intelligence could end mankind. Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that future developments in artificial intelligence may just mean the end of humanity.

The cult of buying fake followers exposed by Instagram cull. Yesterday, Instagram began the process of getting rid of all the spam accounts in its system, which has proved to be really embarrassing for all the people who bought a load of spambots to make themselves look more popular than they are.

Buying fake YouTube views, Facebook likes or Instagram followers has become something of an epidemic over the past few years.
Artist launches fundraiser to live 24/7 in virtual reality. Today, Mark Farid launches his fundraising bid to begin a 28-day trip into a separate Oculus Rift-enabled reality.

As part of the seeing-i project, the London-based artist will wear virtual reality for a month non-stop and quite literally see the world through someone else's eyes.
Sliced in Half Bullets in Sabine Pearlman’s Photography » Design You Trust. Design and Beyond.
Quentin Jones exposed. Quentin Jones’ star has been nudging stellar status since those signature thick swoops of ink began addictively illustrating everything in sight.

From magazine covers to fashion film, cut and paste collaging, illustration, stop motion animation – the list goes on.
The Power of Social Media. A New Layer exhibition. A New Layer is an exhibition by Matti Klenell, Stina Löfgren, Carina Seth Andersson, TAF Arkitektkontor through Gabriella Gustafson and Mattias Ståhlbom which will be on stage in Stockholm from November 11 to February 8.

The exhibition will show contemporary objects made with an ancient technique. Lacquer has been used in East Asia for over 7000 years and encompasses a variety of techniques and applications. The title A New Layer refers to how the lacquer is applied in several layers until the desired surface sheen occurs. Historically, China and Japan have been the prime regions for the development of the lacquer art form.
Dutch Girl Fakes a 5-Week Vacation to South East Asia by Posting Phoney Photos to Facebook. Dutch graphic design student Zilla van den Born recently conducted an interesting experiment on the power of phoney and misleading photos on social media.

For five weeks, Zilla tricked her family and Facebook friends into thinking that she was on a long and exciting vacation through South East Asia.
What next for politics in Israel as government falls?
3 December 2014Last updated at 08:08 ET By Kevin Connolly BBC News, Jerusalem Mr Netanyahu is the second longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history Israel's coalition government struggled to come up with coherent policies to a series of challenges in its short turbulent life but it did live up to one expectation at least - it did not last very long.

Flickr is about to sell off your Creative Commons photos. Are you one of the millions of people signed up to Flickr? It's time to switch your license settings. The Yahoo-owned photo-sharing site has just announced that it will start selling prints of some 50 million Creative Commons-licensed images, but the photographers involved won't see any of the profits. Nope. Not a single penny. Over 300 million Flickr images come under the Creative Commons license, which allows people to reuse and repurpose these images for free under certain conditions. But the vast majority of licensed images are up for grabs commercially – which means that Flickr is perfectly within its rights to start flogging them off.